Today, April 12, is the birthday of Edward de Vere who would
become the 17th Earl of Oxford and the poet and playwright known as
“Shakespeare”. I take this opportunity
to introduce him before he became Shakespeare through quotes from the first and
from the most recent book I have written on the subject.
Edward De Vere was born April 12th,
in the year 1550, at Hedingham Castle, in Essex, to John De Vere, the 16th Earl
of Oxford, and his second wife Margery De Vere (née Golding). The Vere family was among the most powerful
in England. They had held the Earldom of
Oxford and the ceremonial office of Lord Great Chamberlain (not the same office
as Lord Chamberlain) for centuries.
John’s sister, Frances, had married into the even more powerful Howard
family, making him the brother-in-law of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who
introduced the 14-line sonnet form ending in a final couplet which Shake-speare
would make so thoroughly his own that it is now called the “Shakespearean
Sonnet”. Surrey would also be the first
to introduce the iambic pentameter as the standard meter of his later poems.[1]
He would become the Earl of Oxford following his father’s
death in August of 1562. Being a minor,
he was taken under the wardship of the Queen. As was
the established manner of dealing with wardship, she delegated her
authority to her trusted First Secretary William Cecil. Somewhat less the established manner, she
gave the revenues from De Vere’s lands, during his minority, to her dear
personal friend Robert Dudley.
We get a good look at De Vere as a Court wit and writer in the various
appendices of my edition of his 1584 play, Ulysses and Agamemnon. A writer of Court plays was decidedly not
a professional. It would have brought
shame upon himself if he were to descend to a profession — especially the
theater.
By 1584, however, De Vere’s inadvertent apprenticeship was almost at an end. He writes still as a talented courtier but he has become something more than his fellows. He has a strong talent, a special grasp of language, and a creative flight that is mounting higher with each new play.
A playwright emerges who shares traits with the mature Shakespeare
but is also quite different. He enjoys
imagery from knightly tournaments. He
revels in the lists. He knows the
details of the rules of tournament combat, the trappings of the lists, the feel
of the armor. In fact, the combat in the
play is actually a description of the events of a multi-day grand tournament.
Sex is often on his mind. In
the mouths of his low characters, he loves to joke about the stews and the
venereal diseases that occupy them. He
takes a certain pride in knowing the cant.
The dangers of “the placket” are a matter of considerable interest and
concern for him.
But De Vere also spent lavishly. So lavishly, in fact, that he nearly
bankrupted his Earldom. He had alienated
(i.e. sold off) most of his lands. Not
only that but he had lost his special favor in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth by
impregnating one of her ladies-in-waiting.
He bristled like the proud boar on his family crest at the least advice or correction regarding these matters. He tried to recover his losses through risky
investment, and a memorial of sonnets by which to recover the Queen’s affection,
and, by the late 1580s, had to accept a bailout from the Queen which removed
his control of nearly all of his lands and left him with an annuity of ₤1000
(roughly $300,000 in today's money).
No longer an enormously wealthy Earl, or a dashing courtier,
it is at this point that De Vere took up the one thing remaining to him that
gave him satisfaction. Finally humbled
before life — no longer able to make excuses — he reflected on the ways of the
world and on his short-fallings and took up his pen.
When, in disgrace with fortune and
men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my
bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in
hope,
Featured like him, like him with
friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s
scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost
despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my
state,
(Like to the lark at break of day
arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at
heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I
scorn to change my state with kings.[3]
It was then that Shakespeare was born.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Shakespeare’s Barnacles. March 3, 2016. “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
- Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link. January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
- Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke? August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
- Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.
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